Print Perspectives

Capitalizing on opportunities in the "and" era of print

October 15, 2024

Andy robbins drupa 2024

Andy Robbins, Blackmore's Managing Director, speaks at the Kodak drupa 2024 customer roundtable.

The current "and" era of print includes both traditional offset printing solutions, which still accounts for over 90 percent of pages printed, and rapidly improving digital technology. Savvy printers are exploiting the specific benefits of both technologies to achieve growth and boost their profitability in a difficult market environment.

The growing number of companies following this strategy includes Blackmore Ltd. Based in Shaftesbury, Dorset, Blackmore is one of the UK's leading sustainability-driven, green printers offering commercial and packaging printing services. Founded at the end of the 19th century, the print shop today employs around 60 people and runs B1 sheetfed offset, coldset web offset and digital toner printing presses.

The emergence of digital has given offset a new role

Andy Robbins, Blackmore's Managing Director, was one of the participants in Kodak's inspiring customer roundtable discussion at drupa 2024. He emphasized the complementary nature of digital printing to offset and explained the role that digital plays for the Blackmore team: "We are relatively new adopters of digital and really the keyword is complement. In the commercial printing business, we print short runs, jobs with variable data and advance copies digitally. We're quite heavily into packaging. Short-run packaging or prototypes are also being produced on our digital presses, so this is certainly a growing area for us."

An interesting question in the discussion was how the offset process has evolved and improved at the companies over the years. As a Kodak customer, Blackmore uses the PRINERGY Workflow Platform with the INSITE Prepress Portal, a MAGNUS Q800 Platesetter and SONORA XTRA Process Free Plates in the offset area. According to Andy Robbins, the offset side of the business has changed immeasurably in the 26 years he has been in the industry: "Today, there are many more short runs, much more bespoke high-end products and decorative coatings. Everybody wants something to look slightly different and stand out. We found there's obviously a much heavier focus on sustainability as well on the offset side, so minimizing waste is a big focus for our business."

The discussion also touched on the need for further automation of both digital and offset processes. In this respect, PRINERGY Platform's Rules Based Automation (RBA) is crucial to Andy Robbins: "We've found we've made good use of RBA with the PRINERGY Technology. However, with the increase in short-run digital work, we are still processing that too slowly at this moment in time, so we've got a project underway where we are looking to remove touchpoints and aiming to improve the efficiency of the throughput from the estimate stage right through to final delivery."

To watch the lively customer roundtable discussion and learn more about how Kodak customers are succeeding in the "and" era of print, click here.